Methinks it is sort-of like two weasels

[Dan_Eastwood]

@lee_merrill

Well, again, the most likely estimator for the population mean is just the sample mean.

The sample mean is not relevant, you are not using a likelihood for estimating a population parameter. The interpretation you are using for the likelihood is not correct.

@lee_merrill

But all routes were open to evolution, none of them were ignored.

Routes available to evolution are not part of your calculation, even to name the particular pathway you claim is improbable.
You further presume that all steps are “not selectable” with no justification. You do not consider the probability of “scaffolding” that is known to produce IC structures. You do not consider sexual mixing, which can combine sequences in ways that bypass “non-selectable” steps.

Most of these calculations are not possible outside of special circumstances such as phylogenetic analysis. This is why we don’t see biologists using this approach at all. ID researchers have no special knowledge of mathematics that could make this possible. I am not the first to make these criticisms.

The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism

I stumbled across a very interesting article today that touched on a lot of the mathematical arguments against evolution that occasionally appear here. Perhaps a little harsh, but not unreasonably so. This makes you wonder why anti-evolutionists insist on padding their work with so much irrelevant and erroneous mathematical formalism. The answer is that their literature has far more to do with propaganda than it does with serious argument. Mathematics is unique in its ability to bamboozle a lay audience, making it well suited to their purposes. But for all its superficial sophistication, anti-evolutionary mathematics is not even successful at raising interesting questions about evolution.